Parties, their trademarks, and 2010

Our Minnesota major political parties have no way to protect their trademarks. We have neither party registration nor closed primaries. Anybody can claim a party and the only check is an open primary in which it is possible that nobody who will admit publicly to be a part of that party can affirm the claim for the designation, no matter how baseless it might be.

So we have established the party endorsement system. It may not be as inclusive as a primary, but it worked in most cases for quite a while. And the endorsement system allows for a lesser funded candidate to seek office. But the endorsement process can lead itself to being perceived as a process which favors “insiders” and even the most honorable of our political types is tempted to cater to those who suspect insiders when the endorsement does not go their way, especially if their candidate is well funded.

If parties stuck with their endorsement system and consistently refused to recognize or cooperate with those who flaunt the system, they might have been able to preserve the endorsement system, but the violations they have increasingly continued to tolerate have led many more candidates to seek the nomination from the multi-partisan public without obtaining or even trying to obtain the one-party endorsement.

This leads to people dropping out of the caucus-convention system. After all, if your input is deemed irrelevant, why waste the time and effort? Soon only those who have a really deep interest in a candidate[s] or cause[s] or whose livelihoods is directly affected by the future[s] of people in the political class are the only ones participating.

So with so few people participating these days and those who do being so much less representative of the general electorate, you cannot generally obtain a GOP endorsement if you don’t oppose all tax increases, suggest that lesbians and gays deserve the same measure of civic freedom that straights have, or fail to give lip service to pro-life people and causes and you may as well try not to get DFL endorsement if you are not “pro-choice,” or oppose gun control. [Of course, as I have noted before we all favor choice, just that we don’t agree on which subject merit the right or which side one should take. Take minimum wage, seat belts, or smoking for example.]

In a Thursday post. Doug Grow of MinnPost asks, “Can either party endorse a candidate for governor who will appeal to mainstream Minnesota?”

I noted in a previous post, the DFL has not been able to endorse a non-incumbent candidate for governor since 1970. Lest you think I am singling out the DFL, it should be noted that the GOP has only succeeded twice in the same interval [1978 for Al Quie and 2002 for Pawlenty] and has had its own failed endorsees such as such as Wangberg, Ludeman, Grunseth, Quist, and Norm in that period.

I am beginning to suggest that we allow parties to control their own trademarks and to allow them to take responsibility for them. People could wonder whether that would close the system to many others, centrists and extremists, so the same law that would give parties this control would need to address this but there are ways it could be done.

Unlike Mr. Grow, I personally do not think that Pawlenty’s veto of the earlier [August] primary really has much effect on the situation. But Grow notes that under our recent three-party system that one does not need to appeal to a majority of the voters to get elected, quoting Tim Penny as saying, “But we now know that 42 percent plus 312 votes is electable."

But wouldn’t it be nice if we could elect somebody decisively for a change? [The right somebody, of course]